Mr. Speaker, like my colleague from Cumberland--Colchester, I feel that I should not have to be standing here, that none of us should have to be standing here talking about overfishing off Newfoundland off the Atlantic shore. We have been talking about this issue for 20 or 25 years. The problem is we have not been doing anything or anywhere near enough about it.
I want to recognize the member for St. John's West who proposed this emergency debate. It is obvious that we need to press the government to take definite action, so I thank him for this opportunity.
These are observations from my travels to the east coast, never having resided there, but they are very much fixed in my mind, especially in regard to Newfoundland and Labrador. We are not just talking about the loss of an industry. We really are talking about the loss of a culture that is unique, certainly to Canada and I would argue unique to the world. That was brought home in the debate this evening as we listened to the members from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans with those heart-rending tales of misfortune by fishers who live in that area.
In 10 or 20 years will have to say that we are sorry, that we recognized the problem back in 2002 and we recognized it back in the 1980s, but we just did not do enough about it? Will we have to say “Sorry, as a culture you have disappeared?” That is not acceptable but it is what we are faced with.
I was just reading some notes from the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook Report 2000 from which I will quote. It states:
In the North Atlantic, 21 of the 43 groundfish stocks in Canadian waters are now in decline and 16 more have shown no recent signs of growth. Groundfish, such as cod, haddock, redfish and several species of flatfish, are most affected by pressure from overfishing, and ground fish stocks off the east coast, especially cod, have nearly collapsed. The Atlantic finfish catch, of which groundfish form the bulk, declined from 2.5 million tonnes in 1971 to less than 500,000 tonnes in 1994.
Then it lists several other causes for this. It goes on to say that failures within Canada's domestic fishery management system and foreign overfishing outside Canada's 200 mile limit are the major causes. It points the finger directly at the government for permitting the overfishing.
We heard that again from the minister earlier this evening. He put his hands up and says that he cannot even think that they might do something more, that we have to stay behind that 200 mile line and that it would be against international law. I could not help but think back to my law school days.
When I was in law school in the late sixties and early seventies, I can remember all sorts of so-called experts saying that Canada could not extend its limit, which was only 12 miles at that time, that international law would not permit it, that we were a small country so we could not do that. “Oh woe is us” was really what they were saying.
That is what we heard from the minister again this evening. That is hogwash. When we look at what has happened, to suggest that we will stand back and say that international law will not let us do it is just not acceptable. It is not acceptable to the peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador and it is not acceptable to the country as a whole because it is not true. International law does not work that way.
Look at what we could be doing. We could be saying to those countries that allow those ships offshore to totally devastate our fisheries that they cannot do that anymore. They were given the opportunity. We set up NAFO, they have participated in that and the result has been a total devastation of our fishery. That is a responsibility we have not only to Canada but to the rest of the world. Every sovereign country owes that to the rest of the world.
If the international system is not working, then we have to take control of it ourselves. We have to say to that part of the international community, which refuses to comply with the agreements we have with them and comply with the system we have established internationally, that this has not worked, that they have had their opportunity and that we are now going to protect those fisheries for Canada and we are going to protect them for the international community.
I want to follow up on the comments of my colleague from Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore. We will be going to those negotiations in September. Do we have any contingency plans? I suggest again that we do not because that has been the pattern of the government.
Look what happened when the fishery was in such terrible shape in the middle nineties and the way the government further devastated those communities by dismantling the protection we had at that time in the unemployment insurance scheme. That was done by this government. It shows how much it cared for that area of the country.
What is the government going to do on October 1 as more and more fishers are no longer able to sustain themselves from the fishery? Is it going to maintain the EI system as it is now? Probably. Should it? Obviously not. Is it Will it extend the economic zone? Again, we heard from the minister this evening, probably not. However we should.
I think it was the member for Malpeque who talked about the negotiations that went on in January at NAFO. I would like to list some of the things that happened there. He wanted us to believe that it was not so bad, but here is what happened.
NAFO members voted down measures proposed by Canada to protect stocks under moratoria. They voted to increase the total allowable catch of Greenland halibut in clear contravention of the advice of NAFO's own scientific counsel. There was a long list of violations, the vast majority of them from the European community. Nothing was done about it. The European community led the attack against an important measure proposed by Canada to restrict fishing depths for Greenland halibut. Nothing was done about the extremely well documented misreporting of shrimp landings. That misreporting is one of the major problems. It is underreporting, non-reporting or outright falsification. Nothing has been done about it. There has been no enforcement.
Again, I come back to post-October 1 of this year. We know from experience that those NAFO negotiations will not be successful and will not be of any use in protecting the fishery off the Atlantic coast.
I urge the government to begin to plan for a conservation and sustainable program that would involve total and complete custodial management in the hands of Canada, not just the government, not just the bureaucracy within the fisheries department, but a custodial management program and plan that would have active, meaningful participation from the communities in Newfoundland and Labrador.
I strongly urge the government to consider looking at the banning of certain technology that is being used now. The dragging, which at one point was at 1,000 metres in depth, is now over 2,000 metres and appears to be extending itself on a regular basis. It is probably only a matter of a short period of time until that depth will be 3,000 metres. That dragging is devastating to the fishery. It destroys so much of the terrain under water. It destroys the habitat of that fishery. Even if they are not successful at getting one fish, it has a devastating effect on the overall fishery because of what it does to the habitat. I urge the government to look at that and to consider banning that technology where its use is inappropriate.
I urge the government to get serious about enforcement. We cannot depend on NAFO or the international community for enforcement. That is obvious. If we could, we would not be here this evening. We would not be in a crisis. We would not be looking at a fishery that is almost gone.
We have to seriously consider resources being put into the ocean, to monitor those custodial management plans and to monitor and enforce the regulations that would protect the fishery, that would give it an opportunity to recover and that would give those communities a lifeline.
I recently was on a panel as the environment critic for my party. It was more on the environment side, monitoring and identifying spills, investigating them and laying the appropriate charges. One of the individuals on the panel stated, and there were several who confirmed this, that currently off the entire east coast, that we have either a plane, helicopter or a surface ship in that area monitoring and trying to enforce one day out of every five. That on average is what we are doing. We have at this point absolutely minimal ability to enforce.
Again I urge the government, come October 1 that has to change. We have to have a plan in place that would let us take control of this fishery and enforce the regulations that we pass at that time. If we do not, the fishery will be gone and the whole culture and heritage of that island will disappear.